Samuel Bianchini

Audience Works - Showcase for Touching

Description

Numbered and signed copy

On the occasion of the publication of the work Audience Works, Samuel Bianchini questions the reactive character of his works and focuses on the participative dimension of his audience. Indeed, Audience Works is an artist book that takes an interest in the public, through a study of 17 interactive installations produced by the artist between 1999 and 2012. Also, the cover is responsive to temperature; the ink reacts to the heat of the hand. So the title of the publication only appears if the reader is able to handle the object without any gloves.

In order to develop this bias in the context of an exhibition, and given that the artist’s book constantly questions the way it is displayed and handled by the public, Samuel Bianchini has conceived especially for this project a “showcase for touching”, a glove box, modeled on traditional laboratory equipment.

Audience Works - showcase for Touching consists of a wooden table with a plexiglass cover featuring two holes where the spectator can put his arms in. It is in one of these display cabinets that Audience Works is exhibited. Enhancing and, at the same time, distancing the act of touching, the glove boxes encourage manipulation.

Audience Works - Showcase for Touching demonstrates Samuel Bianchini's deep value for experience: one must live and practice the exhibition, and not solely contemplate it.